NJ SENATOR JON CORZINE: LIES, LIES….AND COVERUPS!
By Gordon Bishop (09/15/05)
The biggest tax-and-spend liberal in the United States Senate is New Jersey’s Jon Corzine, a wealthy Wall Street investor who represents the most taxed state in the nation (New Jersey, of course).
Corzine bought the New Jersey U.S. Senate seat six years ago for more than $60 million and is now ready to spend another $60 million-plus to become the Garden State’s next governor.
It’s corrupt politicians like Jon Corzine that are perverting America’s political system in the same manner that Bill Clinton turned the White House into a Whore House and was barred from practicing law for lying under oath about his sexual escapades.
Like Clinton, Corzine also has some female problems, such as paying them off for personal political gain. He and wife were divorced three years ago.
Corzine’s most recent “girlfriend” was Carla Katz, who Corzine paid out $615,000 so she could buy a historic house in New Jersey and upgrade it. The money was a gift, including payment of a ‘gift tax’ of $145,000.
It just coincidentally happens that Carla Katz is president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union in New Jersey. The CWA represents government employees. Katz and her union endorsed Corzine for Governor a few months after he gave her the fat-cat gift for her country home.
Money and Power equals Corruption at the highest level.
Corzine says the cash gift included money to renovate her highlands home, such as adding a driveway, digging a swimming pool, building a deck, putting in a septic system, plus a large addition to the 200-year-old landmark dwelling.
Now the plot thickens. Katz never sought any building permits to improve her dream house. The town’s building inspector said Katz never asked for any permits.
So what did she do with the $108,150 that was earmarked for renovations?
Katz won’t say. Neither will Corzine. That’s “private” business, they say.
This is a guy who unabashedly tells New Jersey’s second largest newspaper (Asbury Park Press) that, “The public can trust me.”
Only a pathetic liberal has the audacity to utter such double-talk.
In the life of Jon Corzine, it’s all about “Where’s the money?”
The Asbury Park Press wrote a lead editorial on Corzine, headed “A matter of trust.” The Press writes:
When Jon S. Corzine ran for the U.S. Senate seat in 1999, he repeatedly promised voters he would put his assets in a blind trust to avoid possible conflicts of interest should he be elected.
Today, as little as one third of his holdings, estimated at between $86 million and $262 million, are in a blind trust. Corzine needs to explain why he reneged on his promise to New Jersey voters to put all his assets in a blind trust.
When the trust was originally formed, it was to have been managed by three friends – two former partners at Goldman Sachs, where Corzine made his fortune, and a political operative active in his Senate and gubernatorial campaigns. That doesn’t inspire much faith in the independence a bland trust implies. Nor does the fact that the Newark mailing address for the trust is the same as his U.S. Senate campaign committee.
Corzine, the Democrat candidate for governor, has not responded to requests from Gannett New Jersey to release the trust agreement and to identify the managers of the blind trust and Corzine’s two other investment companies.
Corzine also has not submitted the trust agreement to the Senate Ethics Committee for approval. To do so would force him to comply with strict rules governing blind trusts, including a requirement that the funds be independently managed.
Even the money that is going into Corzine’s blind trust isn’t hidden from the senator’s eyes because Corzine himself reports the trust’s individual assets, income and transactions on his annual Senate financial disclosure form, says Alex Knott, political editor of the watchdog Center for Pubic Integrity.
The potential for such conflicts is greater for a wealthy man like Corzine, who has a wide-ranging investment portfolio and longstanding contacts with people in the global investment banking and securities industries.
Corzine is under no obligation to put his money in a blind trust. But he told voters he would do so and he failed to keep his promise. He must explain why.
He also needs to fully disclose his financial affairs by making his tax returns public.
While he’s coming clean, he should identify the managers of his limited blind trust and his other two investment companies and provide details about whom they do business with. Otherwise, the voters will just have to take Corzine’s word that his business affairs pose no conflicts.
That isn’t good enough.
(PS: The New Jersey media is starting to ask questions about how Corzine suddenly left Goldman Sachs investment firm as co-chairman after making a sizeable fortune in the $350 million range. Some Wall Street investors who knew how Corzine operated at Goldman Sachs implied he didn’t “play by the rules,” one of the reasons he walked away from his co-chairmanship of one of the biggest brokerage houses in the world.)
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